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Guess the Famous Parent — baby shower game

✍️ Best Baby Shower Games Editorial Team · Updated May 2026

Guess the Famous Parent

A slideshow of celebrities holding their baby. Names blanked out, guests jot guesses. Half are obvious (Beyoncé with Blue Ivy), half are deep cuts that even the People magazine subscriber will miss. Best baby shower game for a pop-culture-heavy guest list.

  • 🤝 Low-pressure
  • ⚡ Quick
  • 📹 Works on Zoom
  • 🍷 Coed-friendly
  • ✅ Crowd-pleaser
⏱ Prep
30 min+
👥 Best for
Any size
🍷 Coed
Yes
📹 Virtual
Works on Zoom

What you'll need

  • A laptop or tablet hooked to a TV, or a printed photo packet (20 pages from Staples, about $8)
  • A printed numbered answer sheet per guest (1–20)
  • Cheap pens, one per guest (Bic 12-pack at Target)
  • A clipboard for the host with the answer key
  • One named prize for the winner
  • Optional: a small extra prize for the "hardest slide" tiebreaker

Before the shower (setup)

  1. Build your slide deck about a week before the baby shower. Open Google Slides or Canva (both free), one celebrity-with-baby photo per slide, the celebrity's face blurred or named-out, and a single number in the corner (1, 2, 3...). Aim for 20 slides total. The mix is everything: 8 obvious (Beyoncé, Kim Kardashian, Prince William, John Legend), 7 medium (Hilary Duff, Chrissy Teigen, John Krasinski, Mindy Kaling), and 5 deep cuts (90s musicians, retired sitcom actors, older sports figures grandma will instantly clock). Without the deep cuts the game is over in two minutes.
  2. Pull photos from US Weekly, People magazine, or a Google image search filtered by date. Avoid paparazzi shots — go for red-carpet or event photos where the parent is clearly posing with the baby. Skip scandal photos entirely; the point is the celebrity and the baby, not the gossip. Save the answer key on a separate slide or in a Google Doc you can keep on your phone during the game. Test the slideshow on the actual TV or projector you'll use the morning of the baby shower — tech failing mid-party is the most common shower-game disaster.
  3. An hour before guests arrive, print one numbered answer sheet (1–20) per guest plus 5 spares for last-minute additions. Have pens stacked next to the answer sheets in a small basket on the coffee table. Cue the slideshow on the TV with slide 1 ready to go. Confirm the room layout — every guest needs a clear line of sight to the screen, so no "behind grandma in the wingback chair" seating for slide-watching. Brief the mom-to-be that she can play if she wants, since she's not the topic for once.
Front-door setup for Guess the Famous Parent — basket of clothespins and a chalkboard rule sign by the entryway
Set up at the front door so the game starts the second guests walk in.

How to play

Once guests are seated with answer sheets and pens, kick off the baby shower game with a quick rule: "Twenty slides, each one a celebrity holding their baby. Write your guess next to the number. Ten seconds per slide, no Googling, no calling out. Highest score at the end wins." Roll the first slide. The room goes silent for about three seconds, then somebody whispers a name to their neighbor and the whole party starts. Don't be a stickler about whispering — that's the fun. Just stop people from yelling answers out loud.

Click through the slides at a steady ten seconds each. Use your phone's stopwatch or just count in your head. Some slides will land in under five seconds (the room recognizes Beyoncé fast), others will sit for the full ten with guests squinting and second-guessing. The deep cuts are where you'll hear groans and laughs — "who is that?" from the front row, "that's Tori Spelling, come on!" from the back. The harder slides are the ones people talk about after the shower.

After slide 20, run a quick reveal round. Click back to slide 1, name the celebrity out loud, let guests mark their own sheet correct or wrong. Tally as you go. The high score wins. If two guests tie, ask who got the hardest slide right (whichever celebrity nobody else caught) and that breaks the tie. Hand over the prize right then. Save the slide deck to your Google Drive — it'll get reused at the next baby shower in your friend group.

A hand lifting a clothespin off another guest's shirt — the steal moment in Guess the Famous Parent
The moment of the steal — someone slipped, someone caught it, pin changes hands.

Variations to try

  • Decade rounds. Split the deck into four 5-slide rounds: 80s, 90s, 2000s, 2020s. Older guests dominate the older rounds; younger guests dominate the newer ones. Way more fair across a multi-generation guest list, and grandma actually wins one. Run a leaderboard between rounds for extra fun.
  • Just-the-baby photos. Show only the celebrity baby (no parent visible) and have guests guess which celebrity is the parent. Way harder. Best for hardcore pop-culture friends. Pair with [[celebrity-baby-names-match]] for a full celeb-baby block.
  • Cropped-face puzzle. Show only the celebrity's mouth and chin holding their baby. Adds a puzzle layer. Best when the guest list is mostly close friends in their 20s and 30s who watch every awards show.
  • Royal edition. All slides are royal families — British, Spanish, Monaco, Swedish, Dutch. Grandma will clean up. Great if the bride is into royal news. See [[royal-baby-trivia]] for the longer version.
  • Zoom version. Screen-share the slideshow on a Zoom call, guests type guesses into the chat. The host sees all chat answers and tallies after each slide. Works perfectly for long-distance baby showers — no different from the in-person version once you get past the first tech hiccup.

Pro tips from hosts who've actually run this

  • Mix decades hard. A deck of only 2024 celebrities knocks every guest over 45 out of the game by slide three.
  • Plant two or three reality TV parents (Khloe Kardashian with True, Kourtney with Rocky, Bachelor alums with babies). They divide the room cleanly into "watches it" and "doesn't" and the reactions are loud either way.
  • Avoid scandal-heavy celebrities or paparazzi shots. The vibe of a baby shower is wholesome; a JLo-with-baby tabloid shot lands weird.
  • Cue the slideshow before guests arrive and play one test slide to confirm the TV is set to the right input. Mid-game tech fumbling kills the energy fast.
  • For Zoom, share your screen with audio off and use the chat for guesses. Don't try to do voice answers — six people talking over each other is chaos.
  • Save the slide deck to Google Drive after the shower. You'll reuse it for the next mom-to-be in the friend group and only have to swap a few slides.
  • Plant one or two non-American celebrities (Indian, Korean, British) if the guest list has international relatives — they get to win a slide too.

Common mistakes to avoid

  • Only picking 2024 celebrities. Older relatives are out of the game by slide three and stop paying attention for the rest of the round.
  • Not testing the slideshow on the actual TV before the party. Wrong input, wrong aspect ratio, slides cut off — all common disasters and all preventable.
  • Choosing celebrities whose babies are blurred or barely visible. Half the fun is also identifying the kid ("oh that's Blue Ivy!"). Pick photos where both faces are clear.
  • Running 30+ slides. Energy crashes after slide 20 and the reveal round becomes a slog. Stick to 15–20 max.
  • Forgetting the answer key. Mid-game scrambling to remember if that was Hilary Duff or Hilary Swank is a host nightmare. Print the key, keep it on a clipboard, done.

Best prize for this game

Match the prize to the pop-culture vibe. Strong picks: a $20 Target gift card paired with a People magazine subscription card, a Bath & Body Works "signature" gift set, or a small Yankee Candle in a clean scent like "Sun & Sand." For the hardest-slide tiebreaker, a small chocolate bar or a $10 Starbucks card works as a fun consolation. Skip joke prizes for this baby shower game — players actually competed.

→ More baby shower prize ideas, by budget

Our verdict

A pop-culture-heavy guest list loves Guess the Famous Parent; grandma misses half unless you plant celebrities from the 80s and 90s. Mix the decades and this baby shower game lands across every generation in the room.

Guess the Famous Parent — FAQ

Where do I find celebrity-with-baby photos for this game?

Google image search "[celebrity name] baby" and filter by date for recent photos. People magazine, US Weekly, and Hollywood Life all have curated galleries. Avoid paparazzi shots out of respect for the family — stick to red-carpet, magazine cover, or official event photos.

How many photos should I include in Guess the Famous Parent?

Twenty is the sweet spot for a baby shower. Less than fifteen feels short and the round ends before guests settle in. More than twenty-five and energy crashes around slide eighteen. Twenty slides at ten seconds each plus the reveal round runs about twelve minutes total.

Is Guess the Famous Parent good for older relatives at a baby shower?

Only if you mix decades. A deck of only recent celebrities leaves grandparents lost by slide three. Plant at least four celebrities from the 80s and 90s — Cindy Crawford with Kaia, Demi Moore with Rumer, John Travolta with one of his kids — so older guests score wins early and stay in the game.

Can Guess the Famous Parent run on Zoom for a virtual baby shower?

Yes — it's one of the easiest baby shower games to run virtually. Screen-share the slideshow, mute your audio for the slides, and have guests type their guesses into the Zoom chat. Tally after each slide or save it all to the end. The host sees every guess in chat, so scoring is straightforward.

How do I run Guess the Famous Parent without a TV or projector?

Print a 20-photo packet at Staples ($6–$8 in color) and pass the pages around the room. Each guest looks at the photo, writes a guess on their numbered answer sheet, and passes the page along. Slower than a slideshow but completely doable. Allow about 20 minutes total for the printed version.

What if a celebrity has multiple kids and the photo is ambiguous?

Award the point for correctly identifying the celebrity, not the specific child. The game is celebrity identification, not memory. Tell the room this rule up front — it heads off the "but is that Blue Ivy or Rumi?" argument before it starts.

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About the author

Best Baby Shower Games Editorial Team — Party planners, parents & writers. We’re a small team of party planners and parents who’ve hosted — and been guests at — dozens of baby showers. Every game here is sorted by what actually lands in a real room, not by what just looks cute on a Pinterest board.